I attend Japanese lessons and in the last class my teacher teached us the Kanji for "page". I dind't quite understand what he wrote on the board nor his explanation, because he's Japanese and his English pronounciation isn't very clear.
I wrote in my notebook "peegi" and then I have "yoo", which is another romaji for that kanji, but not used anymore (only berore the Meiji Restoration, that's what he said).
Is this correct? Could anybody tell also tell me both the kun-yomi and on-yomi for this kanji? Just to make sure, because I didn't understand this part of the class.

Porutogaru-jin wrote:I attend Japanese lessons and in the last class my teacher teached us the Kanji for "page". I dind't quite understand what he wrote on the board nor his explanation, because he's Japanese and his English pronounciation isn't very clear.I wrote in my notebook "peegi" and then I have "yoo", which is another romaji for that kanji, but not used anymore (only berore the Meiji Restoration, that's what he said).Is this correct? Could anybody tell also tell me both the kun-yomi and on-yomi for this kanji? Just to make sure, because I didn't understand this part of the class.

Arigatoo-gozaimasu.

The kanji is 頁. In romaji that would be peeji. I have not found the pronunciation yoo, though. The on-yomi is ketsu, and I could find only one word that uses this on-yomi, namely ketsugan, a kind of rock called shale that splits into broad pieces something like pages. There is also a radical (a kanji building block) that looks like this called oogai -- big shellfish, because the bottom part is the kanji for shellfish.

I have seen it used in a modern book, but I think it is sort of scholarly -- maybe even ostentatious -- to use it.

"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." -- Vilfredo Pareto

So, the romaji would be pe-ji. Still, I think you won't really be using that kanji by itself. There's only like five jukugo that use it, too, and they all use the pe-ji pronounciation, but none of them are in the top 20,000 words.

Well the book I saw it in was a handbook of English for Japanese people, written in Japanese. It was published recently -- within the past 10 years anyway. I think I may have seen it in a manga, too, but in that case, it was used by this "super genius" character and was meant to show how erudite he was I think.

That said, when I want to figure out how to write something, I check the J-E section of my electronic dictionary. This dictionary is rich in reibun, and in this case, all the reibun have the katakana spelling written rather than the kanji. So I would say that is definitely normal, everyday usage.

Shira

"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself." -- Vilfredo Pareto